"Today at 8 a.m., the National Archives released a group of documents (the first of several expected releases), along with 17 audio files, previously withheld in accordance with the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. The materials released today are available online only. Access to the original paper records will occur at a future date." (via National Archives)

"Two new books from the Harry Potter universe are set to be released as part of a British exhibition that celebrates the 20th anniversary of the launch of the series. The British Library's Harry Potter exhibition, "A History of Magic," opens in October and runs through February 2018. In an earnings statement released Tuesday, British publishing house Bloomsbury revealed that two new Potter books will be released in conjunction with the event."
(via Associated Press)

"Two handwritten music manuscripts discovered in a library clearout at an amateur orchestra in New Zealand have been confirmed as the work of British composer Gustav Holst, untraced for more than a century. The North Island's Bay of Plenty Symphonia is mapping the path of the 1906 manuscripts after Britain's Holst Archive last month said they were the authentic and original signed work of a composer best known for his orchestral suite, "The Planets"." (via Reuters)

"Ginsberg comes up fairly often in this blog (e.g. Rebecca Wingfield's recent post about "Howl" going up online), but the release of over 2000+ audio cassette recordings to SearchWorks is truly another cause for celebration. These recordings represent a staggering amount of primary source material associated with the Beat Generation, the bulk of which date from the 1970s to 1990s. Once the open reel recordings and videos are completed, we'll have one of the most comprehensive recorded outputs from a single cultural figure available for the whole world to access." (via
Source: Stanford Libraries)

"About 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 1, a 36-year-old San Jose man shocked patrons and employees of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. library by climbing over a seventh-floor railing and plunging to his death in the building’s atrium. As the second suicide in 13 months in the downtown library atrium, the grisly death cast a pall over the joint city-university building, which was closed down until the next morning. Now the coda: At the direction of San Jose State President Mary Papazian, and with the assent of city leaders, administrators are taking steps to make the soaring atrium suicide-safe." (via Mercury News)

"The Wikimedia Foundation and the Information Society Project (ISP) at Yale Law School recently expanded their longstanding collaboration to focus on raising awareness and conducting research related to threats against the intermediary liability protections that enable online platforms to act as neutral third parties in hosting user-generated content. Through the Wikimedia/Yale Law School Initiative on Intermediaries and Information (WIII), the Wikimedia Foundation will support a Research Fellow, based at Yale Law School. The initiative will support research on policies, legislation, and threats related to intermediary liability and hyperlinking." (via Wikimedia Blog)

"This book about card catalogs, written and published in cooperation with the Library of Congress, is beautifully produced, intelligently written and lavishly illustrated. It also sent me into a week-long depression. If you are a book lover of a certain age, it might do the same to you." (via The Washington Post)

"The Denver Police Department has begun patrolling the Central Library, amid a spike in drug use and illegal activity that has been the focus of heightened scrutiny in recent months.Library officials are crediting the increased police presence and other safety measures with a significant decrease in illegal activity this summer. The downtown library has also added cameras, increased waste clean-up around the building and stocked overdose kits on site to treat patrons." (via Denver Post)

"Scattered around Ed Minasian’s feet were copies of Bat Girl, Wonder Woman and Spider-Man — just a few of the comics he had snatched from boxes haphazardly spread throughout the San Francisco library donation center in Potrero Hill. After examining each one, he’d glance at a printed spreadsheet to check and see which comics he already owned. “I’ve been a collector since I was a little kid,” the 50-year-old San Jose resident said." (via SFGate)

I was informed this week that Information Today (ITI) will cease sponsorship of my blog, Library Stuff, in August. ITI is a top notch company that took a chance on a second tier, haphazardly-filled, professional library blog in 2005. Thank you to everyone at ITI for making this happen for the past 12 years.
Special thanks to Richard T. Kaser, Bill Spence, and J.D. Thomas for their assistance.
Library Stuff started in August 2000 and it has had a great run. 17 years later, I am at a very different place in my career. I'm thinking of shutting it down for good.
Any thoughts from my library friends?

"An eight-foot cross rests on its side, near an assortment of other crosses and a menagerie of police uniform patches. Close by are rain-curled posters and hundreds of artificial flowers. “Back the blue,” reads one sign, not far from where stuffed animals sit on a library shelf that once held true crime books." (via New York Times)

"The Delaware State Bar Association and Fastcase today announced the Delaware State Bar Association (DSBA) will be providing its members free access to Fastcase’s nationwide legal research system.Beginning July 6, 2017, members of the DSBA, which includes attorneys, judges, law students, professors and other legal practitioners, will receive passwords to one of the largest law libraries in the world. The member benefit is unlimited — with no restrictions on time or number of transactions, unlimited printing, and unlimited reference assistance included for free." (via Fastcase)

"It was because of the letter K that I found my youn­ger sister, but for 14 years, it was also the letter K that kept us apart. I’d been ­­searching for her online under variations of the name Maria Christina Sugatan since we lost touch in 1997, after our mom refused to let me speak to her. She was Maria at school but Chris at home and, later, Chrissy. It became my ritual to search for variations of her name online." (via WIRED)

"In this special mega-episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles speaks with all three finalists for this year's Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction about their novels, careers—and the first time they remember reading To Kill a Mockingbird." (via ABA Journal)

"Every morning in the library at McKean High School near Milltown, students and faculty converge on a coffee bar to order java and prepare for the day.McKean's coffee counter exemplifies how libraries have evolved in the 21st century. No longer just a quiet space where students read or work on papers, libraries are for online research, collaborative learning, even video production or a jolt of caffeine. "We are kind of this center of the school," McKean librarian Cindy Monger said. "Students come here individually to work on things, to do research, to apply for jobs, Teachers bring their classes here for research and to use the computers. We're very popular in the mornings." (via NewsWorks)

"Hillary Clinton received a standing ovation when she said librarians are on the front line of "the fight to defend truth and reason, evidence and facts."The 2016 Democratic presidential candidate spoke Tuesday during the American Library Association's meeting in Chicago." (via The Associated Press)

"For years, Hamzeh AlMaaytah nurtured a community of book lovers in Jordan, keeping his bookstore in Amman's old center open around the clock, encouraging customers to linger over rare treasures and often allowing them to set the price for a purchase. His supporters recently had a chance to repay him when the local landmark was threatened with closure, following a sudden illness that sidelined him for several months as bills were piling up. By April, 330 people from more than 20 countries had contributed $18,000 in a crowd-funding campaign launched by two friends." (via The Associated Press)

"Who says libraries aren’t hip? The Toronto Reference Library is kicking it old school, buying vinyl records for the first time in three decades. The library is adding 100 titles. It already has more than 15,000 vinyl records on its shelves, but it has not added anything since the 1980s, so there were some notable gaps in its collection." (via Toronto Star)

"The University of Missouri Libraries is asking book lovers for some help.Library officials have a wish list of more than 400 books that they hoped to buy but are not able to because of budget cuts.The most expensive is "Complete and Truly Outstanding Works by Homer," which costs $5,250. The least expensive book on the list is "Another Time, Another Place," by Jessie Kesson, which costs $16.75." (via AP)